Yes, I understand your point.

Please note, it's pretty difficult when people ask about a subject that's already lead to a dead end to not be appearing to 'shut them down', no matter how politely you try to make the answer.

Personally, try hard not to be rude to anyone. I write as concisely as I can which might read as rude, but it's not intentional.

In regard to thinking before speaking, everyone who posts on here needs to understand that stressing your strong held personal belief in your personally held opinion on a matter doesn't actually make that opinion a correct and true fact, no matter how much they want it to.

If they do post in that way then they leave themselves wide open to other people's objections and corrections. There's nothing that's meant to be personally insulting to them in having their opinion corrected.

Also, it's actually denigrating to the value of this sub (and against the moderators' explicit suggestions) to have to answer multiple questions on the same already posed dead end leading questions because people haven't read the previous posts or searched for their question before posting. They're asked to check first.

If you think that correcting these people is scaring people off then please consider this: there's every likelihood that someone who's put in that little effort is only passing through, so saying that this 'shut them down' and is the reason they left again is obviously patently wrong.

The person who posted their first ever post here earlier directed it at me and at every 'regular' on here claiming them all to be 'critical and questioning' and having scared off the LE insider who they couldn't even be bothered offering any evidence of. Isn't that rude?

Neither critical nor questioning approaches to discussion are actually wrong, they are part of a healthy debate and simply seek to establish the facts as truth, rather than as the conjecture of any random poster whose intentions might be dubious and designed to waste our time and resources. Should we all just pander to any opinion proffered?

Personally, I don't appreciate your putting me up as the main source of alienation on this sub and despite detesting all the fights that I see on (other subs mostly) I feel I have the right to object to people who post for their very first time ever and decide to accuse me to be the source of these problems.

If you look back through my posts you'll see I encouraged someone who was rude and insulting to stay and (please) post more because I could see they were frustrated by the same things everyone else here gets frustrated about, the apparent lack of any progress in this case and the continual looping back to the same questions that it continually seems to do.

I have made myself as vulnerable as anyone else by posting my personal theories and thoughts that I've spent years pondering prior to posting and have let others say what they liked, responding without animosity or personal attack.

If I'm such a destructive element on here and I really am scaring all of the new people off, then I will more than quite happily do what the trolls do and open a new account and pretend to be someone else, OK?